


as long as there are stars above you

by queertitan



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Amputation, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Manga Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-08
Updated: 2013-10-08
Packaged: 2017-12-28 03:21:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/987061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queertitan/pseuds/queertitan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Men are toy soldiers in Erwin's hands, and like toys, they break. [Spoilers through Ch. 49]</p>
            </blockquote>





	as long as there are stars above you

The first time Erwin climbs Wall Maria, he is fifteen, and the scale of the world below leaves him breathless and sick with wonder. Down in the fields beneath the wall, a titan about ten meters tall is meandering quite peacefully through a flock of sheep; if he strains his ears, Erwin can just hear the frightened bleating as the flock scatters around the titan’s feet. Most of Erwin’s fellow recruits are fascinated by the titan itself—by how safe they are atop the wall, how small it seems from this height, and how eerie its childish body and staring eyes.

Erwin’s eyes are wider. He stares out at the emptiness of the world, the vast green waiting to be settled and conquered and built over, and imagines—if that world were truly empty, if they were predators, how far they could go, how the shape of that world would change to suit them.

He forgets that hours ago he was marveling at the size of Wall Maria. When they return to the safe interior, to the town that grows like moss along the edge of the wall, he feels stifled and caged.

 

Levi is not often impressed with Erwin’s talk of the future, but he listens, though more readily if he is drunk. He leans against Erwin’s desk, one hand splayed carelessly on a stack of Erwin’s paperwork, sipping beer while Erwin talks. Occasionally he cuts in to press Erwin for better answers— _what’s the monarchy going to say to that?_ —always seeming to think that if he asks the right question, Erwin’s vision will collapse around him.

Erwin enjoys the challenge, and he has yet to fail Levi’s test. When he finishes laying out his plans for the new direction of the monarchy and moves on to taxation, Levi snorts noisily and bangs a hand on Erwin’s desk to interrupt him. “You win,” he says. “Shut up already.”

Erwin smiles and raises his glass. “A toast to the outside world.”

“To the outside world,” Levi says, with taunting indulgence. He drinks deeply, and sprawls into the chair opposite Erwin. The beer has brought a certain flush to his face, and his movements are looser, less deliberate. “So have you told the king what you’ve got planned for him?”

“Not yet,” Erwin says. “I doubt he will like it.”

Levi leans back in his chair, watching Erwin with narrow eyes. “You look like some stupid dreamy kid right now,” he says, with a smirk that is so nearly affectionate. “Like a little boy bragging.”

Erwin does not allow Levi to bruise his pride. “You don’t have your own dreams of the future?”

“No,” Levi says. He has another swig of beer, grimacing. “Haven’t since I actually went outside the wall.”

“Why not?”

“Maybe you hadn’t noticed up on your high horse, Erwin, but the world is shit from where I’m standing. It’s hard to imagine what it’d be like if it weren’t pure shit.”

Erwin arches his eyebrows. “You act very driven. I always thought you had a goal in mind.”

“I _have_ a goal in mind. Yours.” Levi drains his glass, thumps it down on the desk. “As long as you’ve got a good dream of what it’ll be like when we’re all farming and raising cows and shit outside the walls—that’s enough for me.”

“Not all farming,” Erwin chides, but he’s oddly touched. “There will be room for all manner of people to find work and livelihood. Farming, yes, but also governing, settling, building—”

“All right, _commander_ ,” Levi says, and Erwin should be exasperated that Levi only uses his proper title when he’s slurring drunk. “Tell me again how we’ll live outside the walls when the titans are all gone. I forget.”

“Gladly,” Erwin says, and pours another drink for each of them.

 

Perhaps Levi isn’t wrong to call him a boy. Children have great imaginations, and a selfish capacity for understanding sacrifice. Erwin has both. Men are toy soldiers in his hands, and like toys, they break: their limbs fall off when tugged too hard, their bodies cave under pressure. He accepts that this is what happens when you play with toys. Something may easily be pristine one moment and shattered the next.

He could keep his soldiers lined up on a shelf to gather dust, knowing they would always be safe and whole, and sleep easy knowing he would never lose a single one except to rust and age. He understands the impulse. He doesn't begrudge the police for sitting on their shelves, out of reach of clumsy children—but Erwin has never been that type.

It is impossible, then, for him not to be fond of Levi. Levi is made of stronger steel than most, and no matter where Erwin sends him—no matter the task—he returns alive and whole. Not unscarred, not occasionally a little bent or worn away, but living, and powerful still. They are friends, of course, and lovers, but more than that Levi is his most precious tool, his steadiest blade, his own right hand.

Erwin does not leave his toys on the shelf. It is a wonder that Levi stays intact as long as he does.

 

Levi is surlier than usual when he’s injured, and all the more so after he breaks his leg, which is to say that his jokes are especially crass and especially barbed. Erwin accepts the jabs at his upbringing, bowel movements, and personal hygiene with as much patience as he can muster; Levi has been angry with him before, and the jokes have been worse. As long as Levi isn't making jibes at the expense of Erwin’s command, Erwin isn't concerned with how he vents his frustration.

What does concern him is when Levi grows quiet, truly quiet, when he runs out of unpleasant things to say about the way Erwin wears his bolo tie and sits slumped in his chair at Erwin’s desk. When it's clear that his leg is hurting him badly and he says nothing, just grips his thigh with one hand and keeps drinking his tea as the blood drains from his face.

"I can get you something for the pain," Erwin says, his voice deliberately light.

Levi shakes his head. "If I don't know how bad it is, I'll just fuck it up again," he says. "You know me. I hate being grounded."

"I know." Erwin reaches across the table and folds his hand around Levi's. He knows Levi well enough to see the little flinch around his eyes, the ragged intake of breath when a normal man would be doubled over.

He does a good job of hiding it, but to Erwin’s eyes, Levi looks half dead. He tries again. "Will you take something if I insist you stay in bed afterwards?"

Levi glances sidelong at him.

"That isn't a proposition," Erwin clarifies.

"No?"

Erwin raises his eyebrows at the barely-concealed disappointment in his tone. "The point is to avoid straining your leg, Levi."

"I might feel better if you sucked my dick."

"I might,” Erwin says, “if you promise to lie very still.”

He offers Levi his arm when he stands. Levi is clearly feeling wretched, because he takes Erwin's arm with only a minimum of grumbling, and leans against him heavily, though the bed is only a few meters away.

The medicine Erwin acquires for him makes Levi a little drowsy, so by the time the pain is dulled he’s also much more pliant than usual; he lets Erwin push him onto his back and kiss him languidly, though he gasps and starts to roll his hips upward when Erwin palms his cock through his trousers.

“Hold still,” Erwin says mildly.

Levi’s face twists into a scowl. “Fuck you, Erwin.”

Erwin presses his smile into the crook of Levi’s neck. It’s usually more of a struggle to get Levi out of his clothes, and while Erwin does enjoy wrestling with the straps and buckles and buttons, there’s something very charming about being able to slide his hands under Levi’s sweater without preamble. Also charming is the way Levi presses himself up impatiently against Erwin’s hands, giving a low groan of protest when Erwin digs his fingers into his hips and forces them back down.

“Erwin,” Levi snaps, breathless and annoyed and aroused. “ _Erwin_ , come _on_ —”

Erwin laughs. “All right.”

He still pushes Levi’s shirt up and lingers over the bare skin, kisses down his stomach, at least until Levi squirms in his grasp and starts to curse at him again. Ordinarily that wouldn’t stop Erwin from provoking him, but for the time being he thinks he owes it to Levi to give him what he wants.

He opens Levi’s trousers deftly and leans down, wrapping his mouth around Levi’s cock. Levi gives a strangled moan of relief and grabs a fistful of Erwin’s hair, hooking his uninjured leg over Erwin’s shoulder, heel digging into his back.

Erwin blames the medicine when Levi is unusually kind to him, which is to say he still presses his fingertips into the back of Erwin’s skull and digs in his nails and urges Erwin down on his cock, but he doesn’t yank at Erwin’s hair while he’s doing it. He’s quiet, too, breathing hard and choking back a low sound when Erwin drags his tongue along the underside of his dick. When he comes, it’s as gentle as a gasp and a jerk of his hips, and he slings an arm over his eyes while his breathing evens out. Erwin endeavors to be considerate; he licks him clean and fixes his trousers, and then sidles up along Levi’s body and curls an arm around his waist.

Levi lets out a long sigh, and when he lets his arm drop from his eyes, he looks calmer, almost settled. He stretches a hand out idly in the direction of Erwin’s cock, but Erwin catches his hand and presses it down. “It’s fine,” Erwin says. “I don’t need it.”

A faint smile presses at the corner of Levi’s mouth. “You mean you can’t even get it up if I’m not kicking the shit out of you.”

“You are exaggerating.”

“Yeah?” Levi turns his head toward him, his hair spilling across Erwin’s arm. “Cause I’m pretty sure if I punched you in the face right now, you’d be ready to go—”

That is less of an exaggeration, especially since Erwin imagines that Levi would be very eager to hit him today of all days, and that thought does send a certain thrill down his spine. Levi has always been well attuned to Erwin’s need for punishment. Erwin clears his throat. “I insist that you rest.”

“What does it look like I’m doing,” Levi says, his voice rough and tired. Erwin watches him fight a yawn. “Don’t you have shit to do?”

“No.” A lie, but he has nothing more important than this. “Go to sleep,” Erwin says, with what very little authority he can muster in the moment; he presses his advantage and noses at the side of Levi’s neck, exhales against his skin. Levi huffs indignantly and spends a few minutes shifting around, being very particular about the placement of Erwin’s arm about his waist, but eventually he gives in; he is, of course, exhausted beyond limit. Erwin knows Levi is asleep when the lines around his eyes ease and his breathing evens.

Erwin rests uneasily, thinking of Levi’s four dead squadmates, and that this is the closest they have come—will come—to speaking of it.

 

It is an idiot’s mistake.

Erwin thrusts out his arm unthinking, because he is all to used to having Levi at his shoulder—and in the moment before he realizes Levi is a hundred miles away, gravestone teeth close on his skin, and there is suddenly pain enough to leave him mute with shock as the titan tears him from his saddle. Fortunately, with the agony comes clarity, and his voice returns in time for him to order the formation to advance.

The first step to correcting a mistake is to accept it. He does this when he saws off his arm, leaving the flesh of his error trapped between the titan’s jaws.

 

Erwin is rarely ill, but when they return to relative safety, he lapses into a sickness that keeps him in bed for several weeks, pale and sweating and grabbing for the aching ghost of his right arm when he wakes in the night. What strength he has he devotes to handling the political side of things and ensuring that no one defunds the Scouting Legion or arrests Eren Jaeger while he’s incapacitated.

In the midst of his illness, Mike’s disappearance is confirmed, and by the time Erwin recovers they have found the corpse of Mike’s horse and given up searching for his body. Erwin is accustomed to uncertainty, to working with only the barest scraps of intel where the titans are concerned, but this mystery lodges an unyielding ache of frustration in the pit of his stomach. His best soldiers and oldest friends don’t go without a trace—but Mike is gone.

Levi finds time to stop in on Erwin nearly every evening, even after he recovers from his sickness, to help him eat one-handed and change his bandages. He also berates Erwin for his incompetence and his injury, but Erwin takes that in stride; it means Levi cares enough to be angry, and with his leg broken, Levi has nowhere else to direct his anger.

Of course, Levi’s leg does heal in time, and he is whole again. Erwin’s wound closes over the stump of his right arm with great finality.

 

It is hideously simple how it finally happens: one moment Levi is intact, and the next moment, a set of jaws snap shut on half of him. Erwin doesn’t have time to react before Levi screams, a high and awful sound, and his body falls from the titan’s teeth in a red flush.

Hanji is aloft already, shouting orders to the troops as they mobilize; Erwin spurs his horse toward Levi’s body as the titan turns toward more entertaining prey. There is so _much_ blood. It takes Erwin a long moment to realize that Levi’s legs are gone, one at the knee and one at the thigh. He realizes this as Levi does, as Levi manages to push himself up on his elbows and stares down at his own remains, his face deathly pale.

Erwin springs down from the saddle and drops to his knees in the bloody earth, wrapping his arm around Levi’s shoulders as Levi starts to slump back toward the ground. Levi’s eyes are wide, glazed, and his mouth works frantically before he manages to say, “Erwin—”

Knowing he must speak, Erwin finds he has very little to say. He is desperate to speak. It seems only right that he should know the proper words, but Erwin is not this type of man. Erwin does not kneel in the mud and hold the bodies of dying soldiers; Levi does. In a hideous and selfish way, Erwin wishes Levi would comfort him.

He cradles Levi in his one remaining arm, letting Levi’s head loll against his shoulder. "Are you comfortable?" he asks, hoarsely.

There is a terrible raw panic in Levi’s eyes, but it fades even as Erwin recognizes it. Levi looks up at him and whatever he sees there—inevitability or grief—it seems to steady him. "Yeah," he says, words rasping. “I’m—I’m good.”

Erwin bends down, kisses Levi's brow. Every time Levi blinks is slower, wearier, and Erwin still does not know what to say. "Thank you,” he says at last, because he is grateful, is overcome with gratitude and so much else. “You did so well, Levi. You did—"

“I know,” Levi says faintly. He swallows, struggles, his eyes flickering up to Erwin's face, then to the sky above them. His cheek presses against Erwin’s shoulder and he lets go his breath. He stares at the sky, like he expects to reach it.

“You did so well,” Erwin says—to no one, because Levi is already dead. When Erwin realizes, he collects himself, kisses Levi's forehead again and closes his staring eyes. A sudden and brutal despair settles on his shoulders, and though he should, he does not get up.

After a time, Hanji comes and takes Levi's body from him. She holds the corpse like it still contains him, lifting it into the cart with the others, dull tear tracks in the grime on her face.

 

In his dreams, they speak for a long time before Levi dies.

“Are you comfortable?” Erwin asks, his voice calm and steady. Levi nods. In the dream, Levi looks as he did when they were lying in bed together, relaxed, content.

"I almost saw it," Levi says. His eyes are fixed on the sky above them, as they were in reality, but full of peace.

"Saw what?"

"What you see," Levi says. “You know—people living outside when the titans are gone. I can see it now.”

"Ah." Erwin thumbs a twist of Levi's hair away from his eyes, and smiles. "It won't be as simple as living outside," he says, because he wants Levi’s vision to be complete. "We'll have to readjust to having so much freedom. Imagine how long it will take us to remap the world, to find its edges. All of us will be explorers, settlers, hunters. People will spread out, wider and wider—too far out for the monarchy to control. Society will have to find a new shape. What new industries will we have, once we have the freedom to explore beyond the walls? How many new kinds of lives? Can you imagine that, Levi?"

Levi’s eyes are closed already, and he doesn’t answer, but Erwin continues speaking until he is sure that Levi is asleep, is gone. He kisses him on the lips, like a lover, and wakes with a strange and bitter taste in his mouth.

In another dream, Levi sees fit to punish Erwin for giving the order that killed him. He chains Erwin to the pillar in the military court and, when Erwin is convicted, beats him until Erwin is limp and bleeding. The assembled crowds are silent in their judgment, but Erwin can feel the heat of their eyes. They call him not a murderer, but a failure.

“Was it worth it?” Levi snarls. “Look at me, you bastard.”

Erwin lifts his head, trembling, and Levi is torn in two.

“It was worth it,” Erwin breathes. In the dream, at least, his faith is absolute.

 

“Do you think this is what he would’ve wanted?” Hanji says, with unusual steel in her voice despite the bottle swinging from her hand.

Erwin doesn’t look up from his paperwork. “No.”

“So who the hell are you doing this for?”

“For the good of humanity,” Erwin says, and the words are not at all sour on his tongue.

The funeral will be enormous, lush, well-attended—the kind of funeral a hero deserves, the kind that will stir up sentimentality for the Scouting Legion, the kind that will portray them as noble soldiers as opposed to suicidal fools. They have needed an event like this for some time.

Levi would have appreciated Erwin’s intentions, understood them, but he would have been uncomfortable all the same.

The edge in Hanji’s voice is growing dangerous. “Does it matter what Levi wanted?”

“Will it bring him back if he has his body burned here, among his comrades?” Erwin’s signature is elegant again, even with his left hand. “He is dead. This is a chance for him to serve humanity one more time.”

“One time?” Hanji laughs, hard. “You’ll use his name to fight for more funding and recruits for as long as you can.”

“Yes.”

_You used him as long as he was alive, and you’ll use him now he’s dead._

Erwin lifts his head and sets down his pen. “Do you object?”

Hanji stares at him for a long moment, eyes gleaming behind her glasses. Then she slams the liquor bottle down on Erwin’s desk and sinks heavily into a chair opposite him, fingers jittery with rage and grief.

Erwin stands, and quietly collects a pair of glasses. He pours out a substantial drink for each of them and lifts his glass to Hanji. “To Levi?”

Hanji nearly cracks the cups when she toasts him. “To Levi,” she says, her voice rough. Tears roll openly down her face as she drinks, drains the glass. Erwin lets go his usual reserve and tosses the drink back before he can taste it.

“He’d be furious,” Hanji says thickly, wiping a sleeve across her face. “Us drinking without him.”

“He would understand,” Erwin says, pouring out another drink.

Hanji looks at him with something like pity.

She cries at the funeral as well.

 

When Hanji dies, shouting orders to the last, Erwin thinks this should be the end of him. He is relieved when, instead, he finds himself not human enough to break down.

They are, after all, so close to victory; humanity is pressing outward now, filling the outermost wall, advancing to the limits of their old territory. Soon they will push beyond and retake all there is, all that Erwin has ever imagined could be. Erwin realizes he will live to see it. It’s surprising—he is so old to have survived the war. After all, he never gave an abundance of thought to what becomes of the boy himself; the toys were more important. His life was far from the most vital, yet here he is, prepared to see his boyish dreams made real.

 

The last time Erwin climbs Wall Maria, he is forty-one, and the blank canvas of the world below makes him breathless and sick.

 

**Author's Note:**

> If Erwin Smith makes you terribly sad and you know it, clap your hands! Many many thanks to [qualapec](http://archiveofourown.org/users/qualapec/) for counseling me through the writing process for this fic and giving excellent plot suggestions. <3 
> 
> Also on tumblr [here](http://fakeandroid.tumblr.com/post/63431965912/as-long-as-there-are-stars-above-you-erwin-levi).


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